Behind Office Doors

A transdisciplinary history of the 20th-century office, exploring how its spatial forms, technological systems and managerial ideologies were constructed, challenged and lived with.

Throughout the twentieth century, office buildings became central to the organisation of modern societies – yet what went on inside them has remained remarkably understudied. Behind Office Doors explores this history by focusing on users and everyday practices. It examines how office spaces were conceived by architects, designers and managers, and how they were inhabited, experienced and sometimes contested by workers. From filing cabinets and air-conditioning to EU offices and colonial bureaucracies, the chapters trace how design, technology and organisational thinking shaped office life. Alongside new case studies on Europe, Asia and colonial Africa, the contributing authors reflect on how the office has been approached in historiography. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research, this book challenges the assumption that the office is too familiar to analyse – offering instead a fresh perspective on the architecture and politics of work.

Author Biography

Jens van de Maele is a postdoctoral member of the research group Modernity and Society 1800–2000 at KU Leuven. Martin Kohlrausch is professor of European Political History and head of the research unit Modernity and Society at the KU Leuven.